New Year, New Hat
by Stealth Noodle
Summary: Phoenix may have ulterior motives for inviting Apollo to the world's most awkward New Year's party. Phoenix/Apollo .


**Summary**: Phoenix may have ulterior motives for inviting Apollo to the world's most awkward New Year's party. [Phoenix/Apollo]  
**Rating**: PG  
**Disclaimer**: Ace Attorney is the property of Capcom. I just proclaim my love for it into the DS microphone.

**Notes**: Written for **justira** for **newgameplus** (both on Dreamwidth).

* * *

Apollo let himself into the Wright Anything Agency and did not find a party.

What he did find was Mr. Wright slouched on one of the sofas, arms crossed behind his head and feet propped up on the glass coffee table, watching one of the especially seizure-triggering adventures of the Laser Samurai. When Apollo cleared his throat, Wright paused the video and waved.

Explanations seemed not to be forthcoming. "I thought you said we were having a New Year's party."

"We are. Do you like the decorations?"

Over the course of six months, Apollo had abandoned all hope of exchanging Trucy's festive _feng shui_ for anything resembling a professional office environment. As far as she was concerned, her props were in their proper places; attempting to find a new home for the hula hoop had earned Apollo a scolding. On a dark day in September, he realized that he felt comfortable amid the clutter.

Tonight he picked out the deviations in a glance; someone had strewn confetti over the piano, put a jacket and skirt on the split box, tied balloons to the unsteady teapot table, and set a party hat on the plant.

This was, Apollo sensed, going to be a very long evening.

"Trucy did most of them," said Wright.

_I'm more surprised she didn't do all of them._ Apollo attempted tact: "They're definitely... decorative. Um. Don't parties usually have snacks?"

Wright stretched an arm behind the sofa and patted around before coming up with an enormous bag of chocolate Snackoos, which he set on the cushion beside him. The label declared the bag "family size," which was fair enough; from a distance it might have been mistaken for a shiny, rumpled toddler.

A second expedition to the back of the sofa returned with an unopened bottle of grape juice.

Most of Apollo's cross-examinations went better than this. In an effort to rally, he straightened up, eyed Wright's hoodie-and-sweatpants ensemble, and gestured toward his own throat. "I wore a bow tie."

Wright pointed at his hoodie. "This is new."

And a nice shade of blue, but this was beside the point. "You didn't even shave."

"I didn't?" Wright stroked his chin. "I knew I was forgetting something."

Apollo gave up and turned to transfer his jacket to the coat rack. "So who else is here so far?"

A Trucy-colored blur breezed through his peripheral vision, chirped a greeting, then doubled back and halted beside the sofa with her hands on her hips. "Daddy," she said sternly, "you'll get the table dirty like that! No one hires talent from an agency with dirty tables! They'll just shake their heads and say, 'Well, I guess cleaning tables isn't one of your talents.'"

"It isn't," Apollo pointed out, pointlessly.

"Sorry about that, Trucy," Wright replied, reaching backward behind the sofa. "Guess I'd better use a coaster." His hand returned with a mint-condition copy of _You're Never Too Old to Pass the Bar_, which he insinuated between his feet and the table.

Trucy nodded her approval and moved on to a cluttered corner, where she began to rummage. "By the way, nice bow tie, Polly! Where can I get one like that for Mister Hat?"

His fingers clutched the knot and twitched. "I'd, uh, rather keep this one a Justice exclusive."

She grinned at him over her shoulder. "Ah, I understand. Just like magicians have to keep their tricks secret, defense attorneys have to protect their signature accessories!"

"That's not—" Apollo thought better of arguing— "I mean, yes, just like that. Exactly." As handfuls of props disappeared somewhere on Trucy's person, he added, "What are you doing?"

"Getting ready for my show tonight at the Wonder Bar. I'm going to wow 'em with a new trick called 'New Year, New Hat,' right when the clock strikes midnight. It'll be a real show-stopper!"

_Or a heart-stopper._ Apollo put the sofa between himself and any surprise appearances, then said, "Wait, Trucy's not even going to be here? Who's actually coming to this party?"

Wright furrowed his brow and held up a hand, ticking off his fingers with his thumb. "Ema, maybe. Later."

"She already said she'd show up for something first with the Criminal Affairs Department," Trucy added. "Maybe next year you should invite people more than a day in advance, Daddy."

With a shrug, Wright took a swig of grape juice. "What can I say? Time files when you're a playing the piano. At least Apollo here didn't have any other plans."

Apollo scowled. "Hang on, you invited me last—"

"It's a quarter of," said Wright.

Trucy grabbed one last set of interlocking rings before bolting upright and slinging her overstuffed magical underwear over her shoulder. Apollo hastened aside to avoid a panty-smacking as she sprinted past him to the door, where she spun around and tipped her top hat with a flourish. "Save some Snackoos for me, okay? And Daddy, don't forget it's still your week to water Mister Charley!"

She whirled outside, leaving behind her a vacuum of silence. Coughing and rustling rushed out to fill it. After a beat, Wright rose, picked up a cup from the piano, and poured the contents over the plant.

Being alone with Wright should have felt routine. Generally they were alone in the office while Trucy was at school, though Wright generally spent that time sleeping on the sofa unless Apollo poked him. The atmosphere tonight was inexplicably restless; Apollo blamed some combination of darkness and decorations and varying degrees of dressing up, and he didn't want to puzzle out the exact ratios, particularly when his wrist began to tingle slightly beneath his bracelet.

As Wright returned the empty cup to the piano, he gave Apollo a cryptic smile and said, "Well, the boss is away."

_Just like every weekday from eight to four._ Apollo slumped on the end of the sofa that Wright had not been occupying and replied, "Yep. It's just us here now."

Silence settled in again until Apollo broke it by munching a handful of Snackoos. As far as he was concerned, the ball of conversation was in Wright's court, even if Wright seemed to have dropped his metaphorical racquet.

The television was still bright with paralyzed lasers. While Apollo dug between the cushions for the remote, Wright walked past the screen to the coat rack.

"I'm going out for noodles," he said, shrugging on a jacket. "Should I bring back a bowl for you?"

Sometimes Apollo still awoke in a cold sweat from dreams involving Guy Eldoon and a salt lick. "Uh, no thanks."

"Man cannot live on Snackoos alone," said Wright, with unnecessary gravity. He glanced over his shoulder and adjusted his hat before slipping outside.

While Apollo didn't have a great deal of experience with parties, he was almost certain they weren't supposed to involve sitting alone with a freeze-frame of a children's television show while the host nipped out for noodles. He munched irritably on another round of Snackoos.

When his gums began to chafe, Apollo reached for the grape juice, reconsidered, and got up to turn the television to live coverage of the local New Year's festivities. With background chatter for company, he paced squirrelly paths through the office, uncertain what he was looking for.

His foot hit the hula hoop when the television distracted him with a Gavinners tribute band. He caught the prop before it rolled away, then held it up thoughtfully as a singer with a less convincing accent than Klavier's wailed about doing hard time for love. There was no one around to see, after all...

Ten seconds later Apollo had found a relatively clear zone, just in time to rock his hips along with the chorus.

Of course he was rusty—he hadn't touched one of these things since an ill-fated high school talent show—but his reflection in the glassed-in bookcase looked pretty good, if he did say so himself. He grinned and adjusted his bow tie, then bent backward to twirl the hoop at an angle.

The band's drummer abruptly threw off the shackles of rhythm. Apollo wobbled as he tried to adjust to the lack of pace, and in a vertiginous moment he recalled Trucy's claim that the hula hoop was meant to levitate people. His arms whirled as he tipped backward into a stack of books.

"You've got my heart under citizen's arrest, Fräulein!" declared the singer, sounding vaguely Borginian.

Apollo scowled as he freed himself from the hoop, in the process smacking his elbow against another book tower. The plate of plastic spaghetti bounced off his head, followed by a brief shower of papers.

Trucy had probably stacked all those books by color or something, too. Apollo pushed drooping strands of hair out of his face before scooping up the papers in his lap, muttering, "Why do we even _have_ a desk?"

But these weren't files, he realized; these were letters and cards, mixed in with opened envelopes addressed to Wright. And they had been under the fake spaghetti. That was just _odd_.

He glanced back and forth from an empty envelope to a bulletin board near the piano, which was covered with Christmas cards and correspondence from friends and former clients, centering around a miniature masterpiece from Vera Misham and a glossy flyer announcing that Lamiroir's latest work, "Out of Darkness (The Fire Bird)," would premiere on Christmas Eve in Prague. Snowy scenes suggested that what lurked beneath the spaghetti plate also were holiday cards; unless they were from years long past, Apollo couldn't imagine why they weren't also on display. Curiosity demanded that he at least check for dates.

A card near his foot had fallen open a photograph of a woman dressed like a medium, grinning and linking arms with a teenage girl in similar clothes. They looked alike—sisters, maybe. In the background, snow hung suspended in the sky over an impressive temple. Apollo picked it up to examine as he stood.

Beneath the photo was haphazard handwriting:

_"Hey, Nick! I'm at Hazakura again. It sure is easier to get reservations here when you're Master of the Kurain Channeling Technique..._

_"So once things start settling down for you, how about a visit to Kurain, huh? C'mon, it's only two hours away! I bet Trucy's gotten so big since I saw her. And you can bring that new apprentice, too, so I can give you my opinion of him."_

"Why does everyone think I'm his apprentice?" Apollo demanded of the card, which did not apologize. "I'm the one who's a practicing attorney!"

_"Oh, and Iris says we can stop having parties for her any year now, but we still have tons of leftover decorations that say 'Happy Parole Day!' Good thing we picked that instead of 'Welcome Back from Prison,' right? We'd never fit 'Happy Welcome Back from Prisoniversary' on those tiny hats._

_"I told Pearly that you still can't come to things like this now because you've got lawyer stuff to do, even though you're not a lawyer anymore. But you will be again, right? You're a defense attorney no matter what, just like I'm a spirit medium. It doesn't matter if they disbar you a million times!"_

Apollo pinched his forehead until the headache abated.

_"And you'd better be keeping up with the Laser Samurai! The season finale blew my mind, so send me your report ASAP!_

_"~Maya"_

At the bottom, a different, neater hand added, "I know you won't read them, Phoenix, but at least dust off my law books before you take the bar again. For luck."

Reading someone else's mail should have induced guilt, but Apollo came away only with a sense of diffuse irritation. Not that Wright was obligated to discuss his personal life—not that Apollo even wanted him to—and not that it was strange for him to have friends, but...

Reluctant to consider the issue further, Apollo tried another card. Once he slid it out of its envelope, he found it wasn't a card, after all, but another copy of Lamoirir's concert announcement. On the back, she had written, "Thank you for caring for them both. In answer to your question, I am still learning how to paint."

Apollo triple-checked the envelope for any hint of context before giving up with a sigh. _Geez, now he's making other people cryptic, too..._

_And doesn't he have any friends who aren't girls?_ A little digging unearthed a Zappy Samurai postcard signed by one Will Powers, a vaguely familiar name that Apollo couldn't place. Next was a lengthy letter in elegant handwriting, which the return address indicated was the work of legendary prosecutor Miles Edgeworth. Curiosity wasn't quite strong enough to compel Apollo to read this one; the first paragraph suggested that it was personal, and his eyes crossed at the prospect of reading so many pages of cursive.

He was in the middle of reading a less personal and more excitingly incoherent missive ("Phoenix Wright, you foolish fool of a fool, would you sequester your jurors from the courtroom, out of the range of my whip? Ha! Know that I am prepared to correct this flaw if your foolhardy system spreads!") when the sound of throat-clearing startled him.

He turned, wincing slightly, and found Wright's finger in his face.

"Gah!"

"Objection!" Wright bellowed at courtroom volume. "That's my personal mail!"

Despite its fluttering, Apollo's heart found an extra beat to skip in the name of hero worship. He shook his head before thrusting his own finger out in counterpoint: "Objection! You were hiding it under a plate of fake spaghetti!"

Wright's arm did not waver. "What's your point?"

"That's objectionable!"

"So is snooping." The hand that was not in Apollo's face snatched the letter out of his hands.

"Hold it! I wasn't snooping!" Flustered by the look this earned him, Apollo tried to massage the statement into something less perjurious. "I mean, I wasn't trying to snoop. I was just trying to clean up, which I wouldn't have had to do if these hadn't been where anyone could accidentally knock them over."

Wright glowered. "There's nothing wrong with my hiding spot. Trucy's been using that spaghetti as a decoration for so long now that it was guaranteed not to be disturbed."

"Except for the part where it's on a stack of books in the middle of the floor." The point turned without losing momentum: "And what's the point of hiding all this, anyway? It's all just letters and cards, and we hang up weirder ones on the bulletin board."

After a long silence, Wright lowered his arm and stuck his hands in his pockets. "They're from a different life," he told the teapot. "It's hard for Trucy to understand."

Apollo let his own arm fall. "What, are you too ashamed of what happened seven years ago? No one still thinks of you as the Forgin' Attorney after your work on the jurist system..." Receiving no response, he glanced around for clues and found his gaze drawn to the book on the coffee table. "Or do you think you have to wait until you pass the bar again?"

Wright quirked his lips. "I think you should save the pressing for the courtoom."

"I... yeah, okay, fair enough." _And I really don't want to press my luck when I just got off the hook for reading his mail._ Apollo bent down to pick up more stray envelopes, pointedly not letting his gaze linger on them.

Once the last of the mail had been fished out from under the sofa, Wright tucked it all between the pages of _You're Never Too Old to Pass the Bar_, which bulged. He shrugged and said, "Leave the books for later. It's almost midnight."

The television confirmed this, offering a tight zoom on a vaguely round collusion of lights and glass. Trying to work out boundaries made Apollo's eyes water. "The ball looks kind of... misshapen."

Wright nodded. "It's a Blue Badger head. The police department is sponsoring the celebration this year."

"I see," said Apollo, eyeing a glittery gash that approximated a mouth. _And I wish I didn't._

For several seconds, the television announcer droned on without the competition of conversation. As Apollo debated sitting back down until the badger actually started moving, Wright coughed and sidled closer to him, blocking the shortest path to a sofa cushion. His proximity made the office feel warmer; Apollo resisted the urge to loosen his bow tie.

"Thanks for coming," said Wright.

Apollo shrugged. "I didn't have anything else to do tonight." Damage control began in the middle of the final phoneme: "I mean, I could have. If I wanted to. I'm just not really big on parties. I mean, this one is okay, but it's not all, you know, loud music."

Clamping his jaw shut, he rolled his sleeves higher up his arms. His cheeks felt flushed.

"Right, your idea of a party is all about snooping." Wright held a look of deadpan disapproval before laughing and scratching the back of his neck. "Just kidding. It's better to get things out in the open. That's what defending's all about, when you're doing it right."

_It's not like you need to tell me that._ With a quiet huff, Apollo reached back to loosen his bow tie.

"That and luck," Wright went on, at a tangent. "No defense attorney can afford to ignore a good-luck tradition."

Apollo glanced again at the hideous visage of the badger ball before frowning. "What, so you think we should eat ham or peas or something for good luck? I hope you've got something other than Snackoos around here."

Wright shrugged and stared at the floor.

Tingling encircled Apollo's wrist. Potential sources were limited, so he squinted at Wright until he spotted the cause. "You're tapping your fingers." His frown deepened. "And you've got no sense of rhythm. This explains a lot about your piano-playing."

Wright stilled, fore and middle fingers poised just above the back of the sofa. On the screen, the badger head rocked from side to side before beginning a shuddery descent.

Apollo's bracelet constricted again. "Now you're swallowing. I notice this stuff, you know. What're you so worked up about, any—"

Wright shifted closer and rested a hand low on his back, triggering a disproportionate jump in Apollo's pulse. His other senses dimmed to bring the touch into focus, and for a moment Apollo wasn't certain of much beyond that this was the decisive piece of evidence that made sense of the evening.

The chanting of the on-screen crowd gave him a dwindling number of seconds to decide how he felt about that.

"You could have just said something," he pointed out as the countdown hit the single digits. When Wright still looked uncertain, Apollo rolled his eyes and angled his chin up to initiate.

There was something to be said for kissing while a live audience cheered wildly in the background.

When Apollo stepped back, flushed and flustered, he fumbled for something to say. "That was... weird."

Wright coughed and scratched the back of his head. "Sorry."

"Hey, I didn't say it was _bad_. You should have said something earlier."

The bracelet loosened slightly as Wright let out a long breath. He muted the television in the middle of breathless well-wishing from the chief of police, then whistled his way to settling in on the sofa. The Snackoos bag was relocated to the coffee table, freeing up the cushion adjacent to him. Apollo took it.

"So," he said, because the air was warm and thick and too quiet, "I guess that Maya person isn't your girlfriend, after all."

Wright quirked an eyebrow. "Private mail."

"Right. Sorry." Apollo blew a drooping strand of hair out of his face, then let his voice hitch a ride on his next coherent thought: "I, uh, I had your action figure."

The sofa squeaked as Wright sat bolt upright out of his slouch, lips parted around an expression in flux. "I had an action figure?"

_Guess he didn't make any money from it._ "Yeah, it wasn't very good—the colors were all weird, and you had a cravat—but when you pushed a button on its back, its arm swung up and it yelled, 'Projection!'"

"I had a _bootleg_ action figure." The smile twitching at Wright's lips split into a wide grin, which opened further with laughter. His knitted hat fell off his head as he slid back down into the cushion. When he wound down to amused wheezing, he took a swig from his bottle of grape juice.

"A cravat," he said before drinking again. An ill-timed encore of laughter sent him into a coughing fit.

Apollo thumped him on the back. "Are you okay, Mr. Wright?"

"Fine, fine. Heh." Wright cleared his throat loudly and said, "You should call me Nick. That's what my less-crazy... that's what some of my friends call me."

This would take some adjustment, and Apollo could only adjust so much in one evening. At the moment, he was busy adjusting to the idea that it was okay now to admire Wright's hands, which Wright had folded in his lap after setting down the bottle. "Uh, sure," Apollo replied. "Later."

Some things probably still needed to be said, but he decided that now was not the time for them; he was seldom even awake at this hour unless he felt the need for an intense Chords of Steel training session. Instead he shifted closer to Wright and said, "How long do you figure we have until the boss gets back?"

There was also something to be said for kissing without a countdown. Apollo tried to disguise hesitation as deliberate languor, but it didn't matter if he succeeded; Wright moved slowly as well. There was no need for Apollo to explain that he was nearly as rusty at kissing as he was at hula-hooping, though kissing at least had been dusted off during his second year of college.

One of Wright's hands found his and laced their fingers together, and he didn't much mind that Wright's other hand couldn't seem to decide where it wanted to be. He didn't mind Wright's stubble, either, particularly after Wright's lips parted distractingly. He didn't even mind the pronounced taste of grapes, salt, and Snackoos, though he resolved to mention that saying something earlier would have guaranteed breath mints.

Hinges creaked as someone opened the door without bothering to knock.

Apollo twisted around in time to see Ema Skye creeping in along with the cold, her gaze fixed on her own feet. "Well, you can take the glimmerous fop out of the band," she said with a hint of slurring, "but you can't make him stop playing air guitar. For hours. Happy New Year."

Having navigated the entrance, she looked up, blinked slowly, and tilted her head. Her sunglasses slid down to land on her nose. "Am I interrupting something?"

"No, no, it's fine." Apollo scooted away from Wright before realizing that Ema might be more concerned with the fact that a library appeared to have vomited in the middle of the floor. "Just, um, don't trip on anything."

Ema's tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth as she picked her way to a chair, where she sat expectantly until Wright tossed the sack of Snackoos into her lap.

"Hey, thanks!" she said around her first mouthful. "It looks like you had a wilder party here than we did at the precinct. So did everyone else just trash the place and leave?"

"Something like that," said Wright, overlapping Apollo's "No."

Ema shrugged and munched her way through another helping of Snackoos. "So did you see how bright the badger ball was this year? That was _science_." She put her hand to her mouth to cover up a small digestive noise, then added, "I can go if you two want to keep kissing."

"It's fine. Trucy ought to be back soon," said Wright, sounding much more unruffled than the bracelet suggested he was. Apollo attempted to sink into the sofa.

Ema nodded. "Did you tell Trucy yet?"

"More or less. She'll probably run all the way back to hear how it turned out."

Deeper sinking proved impossible. "Did I just end up as the last person to know about this?" Apollo muttered to the universe in general. "How does that even work?"

A Snackoo ka-tonked against his forehead.


End file.
